‘Nautilus' Review: On AMC, a Nemo Origin Story
A steampunk 'Star Wars' with a dash of Jack Sparrow, the 10-part submarine saga 'Nautilus' is gaudy with pipes, valves, clocks, brass, pewter, swords, guns, anachronisms, a periscope that looks like it fell off a corner of Notre-Dame and a junkyard of sci-fi and action-movie quotations. 'Follow me if you want to live!' commands one very shortlived character, just before she's eaten by a Jurassic-inspired 'slug-lizard fish.' The title craft is piloted through treacherous oceans as if it were the Millennium Falcon. The story's Empire—or Skynet, or Mordor, or Death Eaters—is the British East India Company.
This is all very self-aware stuff, and 'Nautilus' is what one might call a big old action-adventure series of Victorian vintage. And, in this case, a prequel: Drawing on the allusions contained in Jules Verne's classic 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,' the AMC series is essentially the origin story of Captain Nemo (Shazad Latif), aka Prince Dakkar, who has a justifiable grudge against the English: He has lost his family and lands to Company violence; he, the engineer Benoit (Thierry Frémont) and a crew of fellow Indian prisoners have developed the Nautilus, an underwater craft that resembles a crocodile on the surface and a shark when it dives, and carries more scrollwork than a Purdey rifle circa 1869 (the year 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea' began serialization). Benoit thinks the ship has been created for exploration, but Company director Crawley (a name with period literary echoes, as well as that of the malignant character played by Damien Garvey) has other plans, mainly to use the cutting-edge craft to seal his company's control of waterways and trading routes. Crawley is surprised to learn that Nemo knows that his name means 'no one' in Latin. But it won't be the last thing that brings him up short. And short of one submarine.
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